Free In the Shadow of Crows by David Charles Manners

within the bus.
    Bindra clambered to her feet. The crowd shuffled back yet further. She brushed off her clothes and called to her sons. Jyothi and Jiwan leapt down the bus steps and ran to stand beside her.
    â€œDo not fear us!” she said aloud, fighting with herself to calm the trembling that now threatened to defeat her limbs. “We are not different from you! It is only man’s limited understanding that sees division where there is none. Your pain and suffering is ours. Our pain and suffering is yours. We are each but one expression of the same Truth. May Kali Ma brighten all our understanding!”
    The crowd was unresponsive.
    They parted to allow Bindra and the two boys, who now clung to her, to shuffle away. Not until the little family was out of the village and some distance from its rickety bridge and busy market did Bindra speak.
    â€œMy good, strong sons, the foreigners’ medicine I need is perhaps five or six days’ walk away, if we stay to the road,” she breathlessly explained. She could hear the Kakariguri bus growling its way towards them and turned awkwardly to glance behind her. “But we may have to walk in the forest . . . away from the wheels.”
    â€œDon’t worry, Ama !” grinned Jyothi. “I shall sing to the Punyajana and they will watch our path.”
    And, thus, as Bindra quickly led her sons off the tarmac of the old trunk road and into dark, dense jungle, the Good People in the trees were serenaded by a solitary voice confidently singing, “ Resam phiriri ...”
    ***
    I awoke to find an elderly man sitting on the bed beside me. He looked into my eyes and smiled.
    â€œMister David, you are most welcome.”
    Priya’s grandfather was a striking figure, tall and elegant in the pure white dhoti cloth that wrapped around his waist and drew up between his legs. With his thick, white hair and dark, omniscient eyes, he looked to me like Rabindranath Tagore, the illuminating narrator to my life, the bright lantern that, since childhood, had chased my shadows.
    I was momentarily transfixed by Mr Mehta’s sun-creviced forehead with its generous daub of deep-orange ochre from his puja to the Monkey God. I then remembered myself, placed my hands at my heart and thanked him for the generosity of the welcome I had received, even though I had not been expected.
    â€œYou are the first Westerner this village has ever seen,” he smiled broadly, in flawless English. “You have now become part of our people’s history. They will still talk of you in fifty years’ time!” His face became serious. “And your welcome is such because, for all we know, you may even be God come to visit us.”
    Before I could respond to such a startling suggestion, his eyes welled with tears and he wrapped his arms around me. Mr Mehta held me to him with tender, quiet strength. It was as though he sensed the burning blur of previous months had been dominated by such a profound sense of loss that I had become entirely accustomed to an enduring, ill-lit hollowness. I had existed in a void, deprived of any depth of feeling or constancy of thought, from which I had been unable to find the least escape. My only means to maintain control had been to isolate myself, to become anonymous, denying all contact with friends and family.
    The facts had been irrefutable: Priya and Grandmother were gone.
    No awkward condolences, no pity in self-consciously averted eyes would restore them to me.
    However, to be held now by this stranger whom Priya had loved enabled me to soften in his supporting arms. To rest upon his shoulder. To cling to him and weep.
    I only pulled away to wipe my face when Priya’s Uncle Piyush entered the room. He was strong, handsome and confident, yet waited with respect until I had regained composure.
    â€œ Our guest from the dark of the infinite ,” he quoted, with a broad and honest smile, “ the guest of light